How Driverless Cars May Interact With People

By JOHN MARKOFF August 30, 2016 SAN FRANCISCO — There are plenty of unanswered questions about how self-driving cars would function in the real world, like understanding local driving customs and handing controls back to a human in an emergency. Now a start-up called Drive.ai, based in Mountain View, Calif., is trying to address how an autonomous car would communicate with other drivers and pedestrians. The company is emphasizing what is known in the artificial intelligence field as “human-machine interaction” as a key to confusing road situations. How does a robot, for example, tell everyone what it plans to do in intersections when human drivers and people in crosswalks go through an informal ballet to decide who will go first and who will yield? “Most people’s first interaction with self-driving cars will…